What action is the Welsh Government taking to promote the manufacturing of personal protective equipment in Wales to ensure security of supply for the NHS, social care providers and other key workers in the future and to prevent the need to rely on overseas suppliers?
In response to the current coronavirus outbreak we acted quickly to establish the Critical Equipment Requirements Engineering Team (CERET) - a team comprised of Welsh Government, Industry Wales, the Life Sciences Hub Wales and the Surgical Materials Testing Laboratory. CERET coordinates its work with NHS Wales Procurement to help ensure our frontline workers are provided with the PPE they require.
We sent out a call to action to industry to help with this and the response from manufacturers has been immense, particularly from our Wales based companies.
We will take the experience of the CERET team into account as part of our work on the future recovery of our economy, building on our Better Jobs, Closer to Home initiative. Security of supply of goods for our NHS, social care providers and workers across all our public services will be an important consideration in this work.